I think he's a good actor even when he is not playing himself. (Horace and Pete.) I think he is already taken seriously as an auteur. I have no opinion on the black and white—it might be a way to reference movies he likes. Is it really motivated by what he is telling? Maybe not.

Of course it wouldn't have gotten to TIFF if it weren't a Louis C.K movie, but do you say that a Haneke movie wouldn't be to Cannes if it weren't Haneke? Not that their status equals quality, but their body of work is of interest because they are who they are.

Then: I'm worried by this trailer. I really don't care about fathers struggling with the fact that their daughters are human beings with a sexuality of their own mixed with questions about consent and manipulation—not if it is in the vein of what the trailer seems to show...

The New York premiere of Louis C.K.'s upcoming film, I Love You, Daddy, has been abruptly axed just hours before it was set to take place. A source tells The Hollywood Reporter that a New York Times story on the comedian is about to break, and the premiere was canceled in case it is damaging. Additionally, Louis C.K.'s planned appearance on CBS' The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was also canceled.

For comedians, the professional environment is informal: profanity and raunch that would be far out of line in most workplaces are common, and personal foibles — the weirder the better — are routinely mined for material. But Louis C.K.’s behavior was abusive, the women said.

“I think the line gets crossed when you take all your clothes off and start masturbating,” Ms. Wolov said.

For comedians, the professional environment is informal: profanity and raunch that would be far out of line in most workplaces are common, and personal foibles — the weirder the better — are routinely mined for material. But Louis C.K.’s behavior was abusive, the women said.

“I think the line gets crossed when you take all your clothes off and start masturbating,” Ms. Wolov said.

Similar with Weinstein and Toback, and even Spacey. In a way, that's the clearest sign that we have reached a tipping point as a culture. These things that were open secrets. They weren't recently discovered. The information isn't new. The times are new.

It's something I have to reckon with myself. I heard these Louis CK stories a long time ago. It's not even that I didn't believe them. I think I did. I just didn't want to think about it, and so I didn't, because I think that he's a genius. But that is no excuse.

These can't be explained away. On top of sexual assault being terrible, there was the calculated wielding of power to keep people silent... and that is evil (a word that I NEVER use), and that is what all these men did. They didn't even fear for their lives and careers as they should have. They operated with the knowledge that they would be protected by their power.

It's very likely that Louis CK, a fucking genius, will never make anything ever again. As sad as that is, it pales in comparison to the hope that some light is being shown and purging this kind of behavior and the tolerance for this kind of behavior from our culture. My initial gut reaction was that this is a sad day, because Louis CK was a filmmaking hero of mine, but now I think that it is a happy day. The pluses are blowing the minuses way out of the water. This can't happen anymore.

Lord knows there is a long way to go (we have a rapist as President), but there are many signs that we are headed the right direction. We will be all the better for weeding any tolerance for this kind of behavior out. Hollywood in particular has been such a fucked up, hypocritical industry when it comes to sexual assault and hiring practices and representation and all of that. But there seems to be a real sea change. And for better or worse, Hollywood is where so much of our culture comes from. It's a good place to start in earnest for turning this goddamn nightmare ship around. What happens here is seen everywhere.

Vulture had an article that began like any other thinkpiece, but also articulated/ illuminated things I couldn't put my fingers on -

Quote

...And it’s not the fault of people who didn’t report it, or audiences who aren’t sophisticated enough to separate the art from the artist. It’s the fault of the artists for being secret creeps or criminals, and the fault of the system for making it possible for them to act this way for years without being punished.

The allegations against C.K. also constitute a form of betrayal, against an audience that trusts artists to make edgy, even unlikable work, and gives them the benefit of the doubt when they wade into the deepest, darkest parts of their imagination.

A well-crafted, intelligent story about the impact of rape, domestic violence, pederasty, and so forth is already tough to watch. It becomes a horrendous experience once you add the possibility that the writer or director actually did what they’re depicting, and might be getting off on making the audience squirm by representing it while not fessing up to their relationship with it. It’s a power move, rooted in the thrill of subterfuge and shock: an artist’s version of indecent exposure.

C.K. did this in season four of Louie, when he built an episode around the main character forcing himself on his best friend (played by Pamela Adlon, the show’s co-producer and frequent co-writer). I supported these episodes because, as far as I knew at the time, they were a storytelling gambit that juxtaposed the self-aware, self-questioning public entertainer “Louie,” who was seemingly close to Louis C.K. the comedian (represented in a stand-up sequence in that very same show), against the private version of the character, a sexual-ethics train wreck who put his urges and sense of entitlement ahead of consent. This story struck me at the time as a brave, if potentially foolhardy, attempt to complicate the audience’s reaction to the character, and caution us that artists might not be as good as the public face they show us.

But the conclusion of that story — a happy ending that found Pamela forgiving Louie and entering into a romantic relationship with him — was gross, and in retrospect, it seems a harbinger of allegations that came to light today. As I told former Vulture recapper Danielle Henderson in a conversation about the season, “That scene at the end of “Pamela Part 1” just keeps bobbing up like something nasty that you want to stay at the bottom of the ocean of the show’s subconscious. You want it to stay down there because it complicates what should be a sweet and rather redemptive arc.”

Finding out that C.K. is a sexual predator immediately changes our perception of that two-parter. Now it seems like some kind of cover story, and any art that it contained is overshadowed by the sense that it was all a con job, regardless of whether its grappling with morality was sincere (and I think it probably was). The Times revelations make it seem in retrospect as if C.K. was trying to get away with something in those episodes — convincing people that he was more like the Louie who joked onstage about male hypocrisy and impulse control than the predator blocking a door; or the C.K. who made I Love You, Daddy, a work that seems designed to taunt anyone who ever had a problem with Woody Allen’s sexual politics and behavior, or worried that the rumors about C.K. might be true.

C.K. betrayed the trust of the women he exposed himself to. Their experiences should always be considered first when his name is discussed and his legacy debated, just as we should think about the TV-writing career that Mad Men’s Gordon never had, and the star parts that Rose McGowan, Annabella Sciorra, Mira Sorvino, and others might have had if they’d never been cornered by Weinstein.

But C.K. also betrayed the trust of his audience. So did Spacey and Cosby and the rest.

Louis C.K. on Friday released a statement in response to a report published Thursday in The New York Times about several women who stepped forward to discuss experiences with him in which he committed acts of sexual misconduct. In his statement, Louis C.K. said, “These stories are true.”

The complete statement from Louis C.K. appears below:

I want to address the stories told to The New York Times by five women named Abby, Rebecca, Dana, Julia who felt able to name themselves and one who did not.

These stories are true. At the time, I said to myself that what I did was O.K. because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly. I have been remorseful of my actions. And I’ve tried to learn from them. And run from them. Now I’m aware of the extent of the impact of my actions. I learned yesterday the extent to which I left these women who admired me feeling badly about themselves and cautious around other men who would never have put them in that position. I also took advantage of the fact that I was widely admired in my and their community, which disabled them from sharing their story and brought hardship to them when they tried because people who look up to me didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t think that I was doing any of that because my position allowed me not to think about it. There is nothing about this that I forgive myself for. And I have to reconcile it with who I am. Which is nothing compared to the task I left them with. I wish I had reacted to their admiration of me by being a good example to them as a man and given them some guidance as a comedian, including because I admired their work.

The hardest regret to live with is what you’ve done to hurt someone else. And I can hardly wrap my head around the scope of hurt I brought on them. I’d be remiss to exclude the hurt that I’ve brought on people who I work with and have worked with who’s professional and personal lives have been impacted by all of this, including projects currently in production: the cast and crew of Better Things, Baskets, The Cops, One Mississippi, and I Love You, Daddy. I deeply regret that this has brought negative attention to my manager Dave Becky who only tried to mediate a situation that I caused. I’ve brought anguish and hardship to the people at FX who have given me so much The Orchard who took a chance on my movie. and every other entity that has bet on me through the years. I’ve brought pain to my family, my friends, my children and their mother.

I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen. Thank you for reading.

Too bad he didn't make this statement before the NYT article since people were asking him about this a lot. Not that it would have changed anything, but at least it would be easier to believe he doesn't face reality because now he has to.

if only our president would face the same scrutiny. Left wing press has done a mostly stellar job in outing these dirtbags. Right wing media calls the 16 women who Trump assaulted liars and want to elect a child molester to the Alabama senate.

Everyone is now talking again about Pamela Part 1 from Louie, but I think that—even if the revelations add something since, after all, between Louis and Louie only one letter is different—you could see what he was doing—and not doing—in the work itself. I don't buy that he was creating a feminist persona to protect himself or that it was a way for him to be a better predator undercover. But the hypocrisy and denial are in the episodes.

There is a long, long stand up part in Pamela where he talks about violence against women, just before Louie forces himself on Pamela, and it was meant—even before we knew what he did—to reveal the hypocrisy or how whatever you can say/whatever you can think/your acts weren't always connected to that. That, I think, was a conscious part. Of course, I thought at that time that it didn't come from a part of guilt. "What can I do?" is a question that—in a sexual context or not—is something we all ask ourselves—I've felt guilty for stupid things that weren't crimes, but it's hard sometimes to reconcile what you do with what you think...anyway...

BUT. Remember that between Part 1 and 2 and 3, just after the "incident" with Pamela, the show had the episode in his youth, and when it came back to Pamela the incident was totally forgotten, and that was weird at the time. The revelations don't change anything—of course, now we can say that it was denial from CK's part, an impossibility for him to deal with it in his life and in his fiction.

And I remember not liking these episodes because he was erasing the first part and I couldn't buy the Pamela/Louie couple—and it felt gross, and also a betrayal to Pamela's character.

Maybe that the denial of the show was conscious, a way for him to show his own denial, but I don't think so. A few months earlier, he said: "This is not real." And now: "These stories are true."

He and his manager actively silenced the women and anybody who brought this subject up. They were blacklisted from being hired by many companies or performing at many venues and festivals. I know of more stories than the ones mentioned in the NYT article. He actively ruined careers by discrediting these women.

EXCLUSIVE: The Orchard has confirmed that they are wrapping up a deal to sell the global rights for I Love You, Daddy back to its filmmaker and star, Louis C.K.

The Orchard acquired worldwide on the black and white comedy out of the Toronto Film Festival for $5M. C.K. will reportedly pay back any money received from that MG as well as any marketing costs (~$500K-$1M) incurred by The Orchard. As a result, The Orchard will not incur any financial setback from the return deal. Such money spent includes a brief awards mailing numbering 12K DVD screeners to AMPAS, SAG, Golden Globes and Critics’ voting members. C.K.’s attorneys at Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern have been working on the deal with The Orchard. C.K.’s 3 Arts manager Dave Becky, who is named as a producer on I Love You, Daddy, hasn’t been involved in the return deal as he dropped his client following the scandal.

No word as to when C.K. plans to release the film, and if so, if it will be on his website. The comedian previously streamed his 10-episode independent dramedy series Horace and Pete on his website last year, finding an immediate audience among his fans. Since being accused of sexual misconduct throughout his career last month, and losing his production deal at FX, as well as Orchard completely terminating the release of I Love You, Daddy among other things, C.K. said in a Nov. 10 statement that he “spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.”

When the news hit last month about five women accusing C.K. of sexual misconduct in the New York Times, The Orchard immediately put the brakes on a New York premiere of I Love You, Daddy and pulled the pic from its Nov. 17 release. In addition, having oversee of the pic’s foreign sales, Orchard put a stop on those deals promptly and made sure its partners weren’t financially impacted. However, an awards mailing was already underway with voters receiving I Love You, Daddy screeners in the mail following C.K.’s scandal. A mini-black market for the film’s screeners spurred on Ebay, and the Orchard has been working with the on-line retailer to squash those sales. It’s easy to indicate which voter from which group is attempting to sell copies based on the DVD’s cover.

Given C.K.’s scandal, there are elements in I Love You, Daddy that grossly hit too close to home: In the movie, a character pretends to masturbate at length in front of other people (which is what C.K. was accused of by other female comediennes), and other characters appear to dismiss rumors of sexual predation. I Love You, Daddy follows a TV writer (C.K.) whose teenage daughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) becomes the obsession of a much older filmmaker (John Malkovich).

I'm surprised we are not talking about episode 3 of Horace and Pete. I mean, I love this episode. It might be the best thing he's done. And I think it can exist independently of what he did. And it also changed.

A woman exposing herself. Masturbating in her room while she listens to her stepfather doing construction work.Horace talking about how he couldn't stop having sex with her wife's sister dreading the inevitable day when people will "find out".And it's mostly about how you can deal with the awful things you've done.

We've not all sexually harassed people and yet we can relate to that episode—at least, I do...And I don't think it matters or spoils it that C.K might have written it thinking about what he's done. Because it's also more. You can try to write your "self" or make a confession or even a veiled confession but it doesn't work out that easily. Thankfully. How boring and simple that would be otherwise.

I saw it. It's really good. And interesting... and deals exactly with the topic of sexual boundaries in a toughtful, complex way. I haven't seen many of the oscar contenders yet, but it's smarter than Dunkirk, I can tell you that.

Reelist [12|Dec 05:28 PM]: I'm gonna do a non spoilery live shoutReelist [12|Dec 05:29 PM]: I'm 20 minutes in and I haven't found anything funny. I wonder if this movie will make me even laugh onceReelist [12|Dec 05:39 PM]: It's getting betterReelist [12|Dec 05:40 PM]: Ok I snickeredReelist [12|Dec 05:50 PM]: Now it's starting to be kind of a good movie so i'll shut upReelist [12|Dec 07:27 PM]: Oof no it's not good